Are we still arguing about integrating women into all male combat units?
There is a place for women in combat arms, you cannot intelligently deny this. Integrating them with males is a bad idea, I'll agree with that. But I think this discussion is fully inclusive of the capability of women to be warfighters.
To this end, nobody has proven they are incapable. To suggest this is sheer folly as there is no precedent on the matter. Only opinion.
You really think that our society is willing to throw 800 young women into the teeth of a prepared defense? (As BN's are the level were the exclusion begins).
And where would we integrate this all female BN? The 82nd? You think a bunch of male paratroopers are going to sit by while a bunch of women go into the meat grinder?
How will locals react in a counter-insurgency to having a company of women show up to defend them? Do you really think that they, be the very definition of their ENTIRE female entinty will not create attacks in a society that hasn't accepted YOUR eqilitarian views regarding women?
Who will lead them? Female infantry officers?
And how will our enemy react when he is attacked by women? When he singles the unit our for attack? When they deliberately capture and rape a few of them? Again, what would have happened if it had been a couple of young women rather than young men from the 101st who were yanked off a Baghdad street and tortured and killed?
You have avoided that question before, but you are ready to commit entire Battalions of women to battle when you cannot face the reality of only two women in the reality of te infantry battle?
Our entire logistics systems exists upon the basis of integration, and you want to return to segregation? A concept that ultimately had to be abadnoned.
Simply because you say there is no rational reason to exclude them, by separating them, making them unique and defining them as women, rather than infantrymen, you have created a slew of additional problems and what you certainly have not solved the problem of inequality.
The idea is to win wars. The idea is not to use combat as some sort of proving ground for moral concepts best debated away from battle.
We can deal with something as dangerous as a battle and equality when my sons can freely enter all women only colleges. No one will die if we get that one wrong, someone WILL die if we screw up the infantry.